2 CONTRIBUTION AND CONFUSION: ARCHITECTURE AND THE INFLUENCE OF OTHER FIELDS OF INQUIRY

The Discovery of the Everyday:

Team 10s Re-Visioning of C.I.A.M.s Modern Project
TOM AVERMAETE
University of Leuven

. . . there are today a few who are across the

brink of another sensibility a sensibility about
cities, a sensibility about human patterns and
collective built forms.
Looking back to the fifties it was then that brink
was crossed, it was then that architectural theory
convulsed, then that the social sciences suddenly
seemed important. A change of sensibility is what
I now think Team 10 was all about.
Peter Smithson, 19741
This paper investigates how in the 1950s sociological
and anthropological approaches play a crucial role in redefining the modern project in architecture. It demonstrates how Team 10 re-conceptualizes one of the key
instances of the modern movement in architecture,
C.I.A.M. (Congre`s Internationaux dArchitecture Moderne), by introducing a particular perspective on the
built environment. Team 10 is an association of C.I.A.M.
dissidents that was active within C.I.A.M. since the late
1940s. It was centred around architects such as Aldo Van
Eyck and Jaap Bakema from the Netherlands, Alison
and Peter Smithson from the United Kingdom, Giancarlo de Carlo and Nathan Ernesto Rogers from Italy and
the partners Georges Candilis, Alexis Josic and Shadrach
Woods from France. This paper argues that Team 10
evokes an epistemological shift within C.I.A.M. This shift
alters the way that architectural knowledge is acquired,
elaborated and applied.

FC.I.A.M. IX: ENFRAMING THE EVERYDAY

The actual infill of Team 10s epistemological shift

comes to the fore in two presentations for C.I.A.M. IX
meeting (Aix-en-Provence, 1953): the Urban Re-identification Grid of Alison and Peter Smithson (fig.1) and the

Habitat du plus grand nombre Grid by the GAMMA

group of Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods (fig.2).2
The two Grids evoked a lot of upheaval amongst the
participants to C.I.A.M. IX. Both contributions held on
to the presentation principle of the C.I.A.M. Grid that
was elaborated at previous meetings, while radically
altering its infill. The Habitat du plus grand nombre
Grid is a matrix that starts off with photographs of the
everyday conditions in North African bidonvilles or
shantytowns and descriptions of the demographic
forces that gave rise to them. The dwelling conditions
within the bidonvilles are compared to photographic
investigations of the indigenous dwelling conditions in
villages and towns. Further on in the Grid there are
panels with new housing projects for settlements in
Morocco and a set of three new slab blocks designed by
Georges Candilis, Shadrach Woods and Victor Bodiansky
for the Carrie`res Centrales settlement in Casablanca
(Morocco). In a similar way the Urban Re-identification
Grid of Alison and Peter Smithson maintains the form of
the C.I.A.M. Grille, while simultaneously making two
important adjustments to it: a change of categories and
the introduction of everyday reality. In the left part of
the Grid new categories as House, Street, Relationship are heading images of everyday scenes of playing
children in the worker and immigrant London neighborhood of Bethnal Green by photographer Nigel
Henderson. For the material in the right part of the Grid
the Smithsons rely mainly on their submission for the
Golden the Lane housing Competition in the previous
year. This project for the Centre of Coventry consisted
of a network of 10-story housing blocks, which consider
the specific topography of the bombed competition site
as structuring context.
These two grids presented at C.I.A.M. IX in Aix-en
Provence (1953) were informed by the methodologies
and perspectives of contemporary anthropological and

91st ACSA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

sociological research. The viewpoint of Nigel Hendersons photographs in the Smithson Grid were highly
informed by the anthropological approach of his wife;
Judith Henderson. She was the anthropologist in charge
of the sociologist J.L. Petersons research project Discover Your Neighbour.3 In contrast to the statistical Mass
Observation project begun in 1937, this research used
case studies to explore the sociological effects of
historical influences on the working class.4 Judith Henderson observed and recorded the lives of neighbouring
families. This ordinary and participatory perspective was
of decisive influence for the work of Nigel Henderson.
In his photographs, streets figure as sites of everyday
practices; as places of meeting, communication, anonymity and equality. It was especially this aspect that
fascinated the Smithsons a largely formed their approach of the built environment.5
Likewise, the GAMMA Grid of Candilis and Woods was
highly informed by the anthropological research that
was going on at the Services dUrbanisme in Casablanca,
Morocco. Within these urban services of the French
protectorate there was a large program for the investigation of indigenous dwelling patterns in towns and
villages. As from 1947 the Services durbanisme had
been setting up a research methodology that focused
mainly on rural dwelling conditions. This methodology
consisted primarily of an atelier ambulant entailing
an engineer, an urbanist, a topographer and two
draftsmen that travelled through rural areas to investigate in a true ethnologist manner dwelling culture.6
In texts, charts and drawings detailed knowledge was
registered about as well the practices as the forms of
dwelling. The understanding of the architectural environment in these specific instances of sociological and
anthropological research would colour strongly the
understanding of the built environment within Team 10
in general and within the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods
in particular.

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JULY 27-30, 2003

ARCHITECTURE AS FRAME, SUBSTANCE AND GOAL OF

EVERYDAY PRACTICES

The most obvious and essential aspect of this new

approach of the built environment, that both grids
embody, is the central role and place of the everyday.
The street life in a London worker neighbourhood and
everyday dwelling conditions in Moroccan shantytowns
figure here as valuable fields of study for modern
architecture. The approach of the Urban Re-identification Grid and the Habitat du Plus Grand Nombre Grid
reaches however further then the recognition the
everyday as a significant realm for architecture. It also
encompasses a distinct understanding of the everyday.
This can be most clearly demonstrated by looking at the
left part of the Urban Re-identification Grid. In this left
part of the Smithsons Grid it becomes clear that the
everyday categories of house and street are approached as activities of gathering on the pavement,
playing on the street and meeting at the doorstep. In
short, the categories of house and street are
approached as social practices. In a similar way the
Habitat du Plus Grand Nombre Grid illustrates an
approach of architecture that is based on a particular
understanding of the practice of dwelling. One of the
panels mentions:
Hiding themselves from exterior looks is a traditional
obligation in Muslim housing. This obligation is decreasing, but so slowly that, at the present time, the greatest
consideration must be taken of it.
The left hand side of the Urban Re-identification Grid
and the panels of the Habitat du Plus Grand Nombre
Grid epitomize the essence of the epistemological shift
that Team 10 installs within the architecture of the
modern movement. As well the Smithsons, as the
GAMMA architects suggest an understanding of the
architectural environment through a theory of social
praxis, through a theory of collectively held signifying
practices.7 As Shadrach Woods claims:

4 CONTRIBUTION AND CONFUSION: ARCHITECTURE AND THE INFLUENCE OF OTHER FIELDS OF INQUIRY

the structure of the city lies not in its geometry but in

the human activities within it8
The quintessence of the Smithons and of the GAMMA
presentations at C.I.A.M. IX resides in their suggestion
of an approach of the built environment that locates
meaning within actual practices.9 More precisely, Candilis-Josic-Woods perspective focuses on social practices

and more particular on their spatial characteristics and

thus on spatial practices. Shadrach Woods phrases this
shift as follows:
We are at the point now of realizing that the city is
not simply a tool and manifestation of capitalism, but
also an environment, an ecological entity. (. . . ) The
citizen begins to appropriate to himself the space of the

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city, and to realize that he and his activities and

aspirations form the built environment.10
In the Urban Re-identification Grid of Alison and Peter
Smithson and the Habitat du plus grand nombre Grid by
Candilis and Woods it becomes apparent that the
epistemological switch to everyday reality is understood, by the future Team 10 members, as a re-situating
of architectural meaning in the cultural reality of
everyday spatial practices of dwelling and building.

THE EVERYDAY AS MEDIATING REALM

The insistence of the Urban Re-identification Grid and

the Habitat du plus grand nombre Grid on the practices
of dwelling and building should in the first place be
considered as an attempt to think architecture from the
relation between objects and subjects; between built
space and human beings. It is an effort to counter the
one-sided rational approach that was propagated at the
early C.I.A.M. meetings and to include an extra set of
dimensions within architectural knowledge. The categories of house, street, district in the Urban Reidentification Grid of the Smithsons can be seen as an
attempt to overcome a duality that exists within the
investigation of the built environment according to
Shadrach Woods:
Architecture, urbanism are governed by two great
families of determinants: the ponderables and imponderables, the quantifiable and which defies quantification. ( .. . ) architectural thinking seems to oscillate
between these two poles, in monotonous flights of
fashion and fancy. At the moment the imponderable,
the butterfly, seems to be incompatible, not being apt
for service in the informatic world, where safety lies in
numbers. (. . . ) I would say then that our European
values as professed so piously, and which include as well
the butterflies as the cash-register, must be accepted in
their entirety .. . 11
The entities of house, street, district, city
figure in our everyday life as such an entirety. They
refer as well to a quantifiable physical form as to
imponderables that are related to it. Our experience
and practice of everyday reality is informed by these
entities. Moreover, Candilis-Josic-Woods turn to these
everyday entities because they are believed to possess
the ambivalent capacity to overcome a binary thinking
that according to the partnership informs architectural
knowledge too often. In other words the everyday is
assigned a mediating capacity. In the work of CandilisJosic-Woods everyday life is considered as a mediator
between categories as the modern and the traditional,

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the particular ad the universal. Everyday life allows

according to the partnership for ambivalence. It relates
in synthetic, dialectical or contradictory ways what
conventional knowledge often separates. In a Team 10
report published in 1954, Bakema and Candilis underline the quality of everyday life to:
. . . reflect and stimulate the primary contact between
man and man, between man and thing what we call
The greater Reality of the doorstep. We should
manifest in architectural terms our desire to overcome
the curbing polarities from which we are still suffering:
individual

collective

physical

spiritual

internal

external

part

whole

permanence change
This ambivalent quality of the everyday is one of the
main points of interest in the work of Candilis-JosicWoods. The partnership regards the everyday as a field
of mediation between what is traditional and what is
new. In the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods everyday life is
valued because of its capacity to encompass simultaneous realities. Not at least the simultaneity of the
quotidian; the timeless, humble, repetitive natural
rhythms of life and the modern the always new and
constantly changing habits that are shaped by technology and worldliness. The partnerships analysis of everyday life is structured around this duality as the panels of
the ATBAT grid already illustrate. The juxtaposition of
the image of the shantytown (bidonville) of Casablanca
with the combined image of traditional and modern
urban environments, suggests that the everyday reality
of the bidonville mediates between the quotidian and
the modern. The bidonville is recognised as a mediating
figure that relates some of the old dwelling patterns of
the towns in the Atlas Mountains to a modern way of
living. While most urbanists would have looked solely to
the negative effects of the bidonvilles, Candilis and
Woods optimistically try to focus on the other side of
the equation reclaiming the qualitative elements of
the everyday that have been hidden in the margins,
vacancies and nooks of the bidonville.

CARRIE`RES CENTRALES, CASABLANCA (MOROCCO) 1953

That this new understanding of the built environment

results in a different architectural approach, is illus-

6 CONTRIBUTION AND CONFUSION: ARCHITECTURE AND THE INFLUENCE OF OTHER FIELDS OF INQUIRY

trated by Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods in 1953

in a project for 100 Muslim dwellings in Casablanca. This
project, named Carrie`res Centrales after the bidonville
in which vicinity they were constructed, is based on an
elaborate investigation of the spatial practices within
the private and public spaces of the bidonville. Within
the ordinary environments of the bidonville, populated
by rural people that moved to the city for economic
reasons, Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods recognize practices of dwelling and building that mediate
between tradition and modernity. It is this mediating
capacity that the partners attempt to introduce within
their project.
A first characteristic that the partnership focuses on, are
the tensions between the general and the particular,
and between the collective and the individual that are
proper to the disruptive experience of modern dwelling. In the Carrie`res Centrales project Candilis and
Woods attempt to reconcile the generalizing character
of modern building practices (prefabrication, mass-production) with the need for identification. Candilis and
Woods try to obtain this reconcilliation by shifting the
different patios half a level in height (Semiramis, fig.3),
or one bay in plan (Nid dabeilles, fig.4). Hereby the
patios gain not only extra height, but they also contribute to the very particular and dynamic expression of the
facades of the buildings. By stacking the patios in an
alternating way they are literally suspended in the air.
In contradiction to the prevailing monotonous facade
of a post-war apartment block, this results in characteristic and diversified facade that consists of solids and
voids. The alternation of solids and voids is emphasized
by the introduction of a colour scheme on the walls that
are perpendicular to the main facade. The result is an
extremely dynamic facade that, though it complies with
generalizing rationality of mass production, grants a
clear character to the single dwelling. Every dwelling
becomes recognisable, because it possesses its particular
expression and identity.
Moreover the Carie`res-Centralles project exemplifies
how an understanding of architecture in terms of
spatial practices of dwelling, results in a specific and
multi-faceted approach of the relationship between the
private and the public domain. It is well-known that the
concepts of the public domain and its relation to the
private realm as forward on the early C.I.A.M. meetings
were outstandingly rudimentary. Le Corbusiers 1929
castigation of the street as no more then a trench, a
deep cleft, a narrow passage12 illustrates the modern
movements campaign against the traditional figures of
the public realm. Remarkably the modern movement, as
embodied by C.I.A.M. and Le Corbusier, offers few and
rather weak alternatives. Between 1928 and 1947 the

C.I.A.M. meetings pay nearly no attention to the issue

of public space. As several scholars have argued, in
much of the proposals presented the meeting of private
and public realm is reduced to the confrontation of
architectural volume and a site. In the 1960s this
undeveloped approach of the relation between private
and public will become one of the focal points of the
critique of the modern movement.
The 1953 project for the Carie`res-Centralles encompasses a correction of C.I.A.M.s rudimentary approach
of the relation between the private and the public
realm. This correction is obtained by regarding the
relation between the private and the public realm as a
function of the everyday spatial practices of dwelling.
Within the project for the Carrie`res Centralles this
perspective results in a specific attention for the different degrees of privacy and publicity within Muslim
dwelling. Though the over-all typology of the different
buildings complies with the modernist slab block, at the
level of the relation between the private and the public,

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the project illustrates an attitude that radically differs

for the early C.I.A.M. models. In the Semiramis building
the patio typology of the dwelling units echoes the
stepped relation between public and private of traditional Muslim dwelling environments. A follow-up of
entrance door, courtyard and private rooms indicate
different degrees of privacy. But it is especially in the
relation of this dwelling typology to the public areas
that the similarity to the traditional urban environments becomes clear. The access galleries of the Semiramis building reverberate the alleys of the vernacular
Kasbahs, with their alternating housing and courtyard
walls. (fig.5) These galleries can be considered exponents of what Alison and Peter Smithson would call
concurrently streets in the air, most clearly exemplified in their Golden Lane Housing project (1952). (fig to
be introduced) Just as Alison and Peter Smithson try to
incorporate the structural aspects of the traditional
English street within a building block, the Semiramis
type can be understood as the interiorisation of the
Kasbah alley. In the English example stair and front
garden mediate between the public and the private,
consequently in the Moroccan Semiramis building the
stepped relation between the private and the public
domain resonates in the succession of alley, door, patio
and dwelling. While in the English example the relation
between public and private is rather transparent, in the
Moroccan building the transition between the different
degrees of privacy and publicity are linked to clear
boundaries. The closed character of the walls between
alley, patio and dwelling underscore this.
This approach of the alleys in the air in the Semiramis
building is complemented with a specific elaboration of
the redents of the Nid dAbeilles building. The redents
define another aspect of the public-private dichotomy
in the indigenous Morrocon villages. The outer redents
define the edges of the public domain, meanwhile the
inner ones describe the boundary of the private realm.
In between outer and inner redents there is a space of
transition. Candilis and Woods give these transitional
spaces a clear architectural elaboration. (fig.6) Within
the redents they situate simple monolithic concrete
elements that can for instance be used as benches or
counters. These elements for gathering and selling are
modelled on similar elements in the souk of the
indigenous villages. They are a minimal definition, a
rudimentary sketch, of a commercial street. Here architecture is reduced to its most minimal form. It is merely
a base or platform that invites the inhabitants of the
project to link their private life to a larger public order.
The particular treatment of alleys and redents in the
Carrie`res Centrales project can be understood as a clear
expression of Candilis and Woods turn to spatial

practices as the focus for architecture. The urban lay-out

and the different buildings illustrate that this results in
a nuanced and diversified managing of the relation
between urban and architectural space, between public
and private realms. This does not solely take its offshoot
in modern meanings of public and private space,
neither in a regressive mimicking of indigenous attitudes. The project is not a clear choice for a complete
interiorisation of public functions, as was for instance
the case in Le Corbusiers Unite dhabitation where
Woods and Candilis worked on, nor is there a complete
return to the model of the indigenous soukh or alley.
The Carrie`res Centrales project consists of a careful
weaving of culturally-embedded and modern relations
between public and private, of indigenous and modern
architectural typologies. This weaving is based on a
careful elaboration of the intermediate zones between
private and public domains.

8 CONTRIBUTION AND CONFUSION: ARCHITECTURE AND THE INFLUENCE OF OTHER FIELDS OF INQUIRY

That the design of these intermediate zones and

elements was one of the great contributions of the
ATBAT project, was also recognised by the English
architects Alison and Peter Smithson. The Smithsons
themselves were, within a European context, highly
interested in the transitions between the private and
the public realm, between house and street. Within the
London working neighbourhood of Bethnal Green the
English architect couple was searching for the meaning
and importance of such a rudimentary urban elements
as door, stair and pavement. Consequently the praising
article that Alison and Peter Smithson wrote about the
ATBAT-Afrique projects in Architectural Design of 1955
shows at its opening page the juxtaposition of traditional housing from the beyond the Atlas mountains
with type A dwellings at Casablanca.13 The perspective of the Casablanca project that the English architects
focus on is not a general overview of the project, but
focuses rather on the specific architectural elaboration
of the redents of the Nid dabeilles building. At several

subsequent occasions the Smithsons would emphasize

that the careful mediation between modern and vernacular understandings of the public and the private
that characterised the Carrie`res Centrales project by
Candilis-Josic-Woods, was an essential contribution to
the development of the modern movement in architecture.

NOTES
1

Peter Smithson, The Slow Growth of Another Sensibility: Architecture as Townbuilding, in: James Gowan (ed.), A Continuing
Experiment. Learning and Teaching at the Architectural Association
(London: Architectural Press, 1973): 56.

For an introduction to both grids see: Eric Mumford, The C.I.A.M.

Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000):
225-238. For an introduction to the GAMMA Group (Groupe
dArchitectes Modernes Marocains) see Jean-Louis Cohen, The
Moroccan Group and the theme of Habitat, Rassegna (1992): 58-67.

See Nigel Henderson, Autobiographical Sketch, in: Nigel Henderson, Photographs of Bethnal Green (Nottinghman, 1978): 3-5 and
Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art (London:
Thames and Hudson, 2001).

For an introduction to the English Mass-observation movement see:

Dorothy Sheridan, Brian V Street, David Bloome, Writing ourselves:
Mass-Observation and Literacy Practices (Hampton Press, 2000)

For the relation between the Smithsons and Nigel Henderson see
amongst others: Claude Lichtenstein, Thomas Schregenberger (eds.),
As Found. The Discovery of the Ordinary (Baden: Lars Muller
Publishers, 2001).

See: E. Mauret, Proble`mes de lequipment rural dans

lamenagement du territoire, Architecture dAujourdhui 60 (1955):
42-45.

Richard Plunz has pointed out this aspect very briefly. He notes that
the work of Candilis-Josic-Woods was an attempt: . . . to respond
more closely to human activity as form generator. See Richard E.
Plunz, Candilis Josic Woods, in: Adolf K. Placzek, Adolf K. (ed.),
Mac Millan Encyclopedia of Architects, (1982): 372-373.

Shadrach Woods, Aesthetics and Technology of Preassembly, in:

Progressive Architecture, (October 1964): 180.

In the 1950s and 1960 the concepts of praxis and pratice (pratique)
were key terms within the French intellectual discours. See: Vincent
Descombes , Le meme et lautre: quarante-cinq ans de philosophie
francaise (1933-1978) (Paris: Minuit, 1979): 28-30. The concept of
praxis as it has been appropriated in a double tradition, i.e. the
Aristotelian and Marxist traditions. The works of some modern
Marxists-existentialists who deal with praxis (i.e., Jean-Paul Sartre,
Louis Althusser and Raymond Williams) and of some contemporary
philosophers who retrieve the Aristotelian concept of praxis/phronesis (i.e., Hans-Georg Gadamer and Alisdair MacIntyre)
illustrate this.

10

Woods, Shadrach, The Man in the Street. A Polemic on Urbanism

(Harmondworth: Penguin Books, 1975): 103.

11

Woods, Shadrach, The Incompatible Butterfly unpublished text of

Gropius Lecture (June 1968): 18.

12

Alison Smithson, Peter Smithson, Collective Housing in Morocco,

Architectural Design (january 1955): 2.